The Name Of God

The following comes from Jacob Wright on Facebook, who I do not know or know anything about, but it came to me from Reece Maggard of Mayking, Kentucky in Letcher County. Regard Reece as a teacher and as one of those great people in the coalfields and rural United States who have experienced revelations and who are developing a theology and mysticism from their place and in our times.

When Moses asked God what his name was, God answered with what we transliterate "YHWH". Over time we’ve added an “a” and an “e” in there to get Yahweh, to make it pronounceable, but Jewish scholars have noted that the letters YHWH represent something unutterable and is comprised of aspirated consonants that are actually the sound of breathing.

...The name of God is the sound of breathing?

For so long many have insisted that the name of God is so holy that we dare not speak it. How ironic that the name God represented himself with we cannot help but speak by being alive. In him we live, move, and have being, all of us, everywhere, always are breathing the name of God.

“The letters of the name of God in Hebrew are infrequently pronounced Yahweh. But in truth they are unutterable. This word {YHWH} is the sound of breathing. The holiest name in the world, the Name of Creator, is the sound of your own breathing. That these letters are unpronounceable is no accident. Just as it is no accident that they are also the root letters of the Hebrew verb ‘to be’… God’s name is the name of Being itself.” - Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

Your very existence, every breath, is an unceasing invitation to awaken to the reality of God. You inhale God and exhale God. Every breath is into and out of God. YHWH. Breathe, and your being calls out to the name of Being itself.

This also adds a whole new dimension to taking the name of God in vain. It's about your life, your existence.